Los Angeles history

Matt Weinstock, Dec. 17, 1959

December 17, 2009 | 4:00
pm

Forgotten Men

As you probably read, film director, Joseph Von Sternberg has sued Fox for $1 million, charging the 1959 version of "The Blue Angel" with May Britt and Curt Jurgens was made without his consent and was inferior to his 1929 version with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings, thereby, he contended, decreasing the original's value.

In all the hubbub over the original and the remake, no one has given credit to Heinrich Mann, whose novel, "Professor Unrat" (Professor Garbage), published in 1905, made them possible.

Heinrich and his brother Thomas Mann, outspoken advocates of freedom, came to this country in 1933, preferring an uncertain future here to remaining at Hitler's mercy in Germany, where both were famous. Heinrich died in Pacific Palisades in March, 1950, Thomas a few years later.

It's time, Louise Schneider thinks, that someone spoke up for a man Hollywood forgot.

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SPEAKING OF WRITERS, Caskie Stinnett, in his monthly piece for Holiday, neatly cuts to pieces the San Francisco or beatnik school of literature. He relates that on a panel show bad-mannered Jack Kerouac insulted writers Kingsley Amis and Ashley Montague, fellow panelists. He examines the meaningless work of Kenneth Rexroth , beatnik poet laureate, and finds he is fighting against overwhelming odds. Of a third member of the group, Allen Ginsberg, author of "Howl, and Other Poems,"Stinnett has this devastating comment:

"From the title this seems to be the kind of book that once you put it down, you can't pick it up again."

'TIS THE SEASON to be jolly, also the season of the "duty" cocktail party. A South Sider, after making two of them, dragged home late for dinner and to his wife's tart inquiry, retorted, "You think drinking all that champagne is easy?"

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THIS PASSAGE is attributed to the personnel manager of a large organization: "What we are looking for is a man of vision; a man with drive, determination and courage. We want a man who never quits, a man who can inspire others; in short, a man who can pull the company's bowling team out of last place."

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AN EXPENSIVELY done-up Beverly Hills dowager, who was showing a new diamond bracelet to a companion dowager, was overheard saying, "I can't wear it for formal though -- it's too small!"

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ASK A SILLY question, you get the kind of answer you deserve. A man barged into a small Hollywood lunchroom, glanced at the menu and asked, "Is the tuna salad fresh today?" "Oh, yes," the waitress assured him sweetly, "it has to be -- we ran out yesterday."

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AT RANDOM -- A weight-conscious employee of a knit shop at Pico and La Cienega Blvds. has a sign over her desk, "Don't eat." A devoted customer tattled . . . A well-known political figure committed this triple-ply redundancy: "I want to project myself 15 years ahead" . . . From Insider's Newsletter: "A word to remember is 'reorient.' It's the Pentagon's new language to make defense cuts seem as if they really aren't cuts. Years ago, military press agents, announcing cutbacks, said, ‘The fat is being cut off the muscle.’ Then it was ‘Stretchouts are being put into operation.’ Now ‘reoriented.’ ”